Sri Lanka: President Gotabaya Rajapaksa signs resignation letter
Colombo: Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has signed his resignation letter which is dated July 13, media reports said on Tuesday.
The Speaker of Parliament will publicly announce his resignation on Wednesday, Daily Mirror reported.
The resignation letter of the President was signed and handed over to a senior government official who will hand it over to the Parliament Speaker, the newspaper reported.
Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena who has been informed of the letter will then make a public announcement tomorrow ending Gotabaya Rajapaksa's presidency.
Speculation was rife yesterday that Rajapaksa had already left the island last afternoon, however, these reports were rejected by senior sources close to the President who confirmed to Daily Mirror that Rajapaksa was still in the country and was protected by the Armed Forces.
Saturday protest:
On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa stormed the President's House here on Saturday after overcoming stiff resistance put up by security forces, leaving an unspecified number of people injured.
Saturday's action came a month after mass protests forced Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to quit and take shelter in a military camp in the eastern port city of Trincomalee.
The Rajapaksa brothers -- part of a large clan -- are widely blamed for Sri Lanka's worst economic crisis.
The nation of 22 million people is struggling under a severe foreign exchange shortage that has limited essential imports of fuel, food and medicine, plunging the country into the worst economic crisis in decades.
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